It would be incredibly helpful if you could book your hotels today. The deadline for discounted rates at the Hilton Austin ends today, so please make sure to book now rather than later! Booking today will ensure your discounted rate.

We have made arrangements for special discounted prices on hotel, rooms, but you must book by January 31. Arrangements for room blocks with the Hilton Austin (500 E. 4th St.; 512-482-8000) and the Hilton Garden Inn (500 N IH 35; 512-480-8181). Room blocks are reserved under Federalist Society Student Symposium. Shuttles will run from these hotels to the events on campus.

Panel One: Are Vouchers and Charter Schools Viable Alternatives to Public Schools?10:30 a.m. – 12:15 Noon
Parental and community support for school choice has increased dramatically in recent years, with vouchers, charter schools, home schooling, and other educational alternatives all garnering greater support. Supporters cite gains in reading levels and higher graduation rates amongst reasons why school choice improves education outcomes for low-income, inner-city students. They also cite the importance of offering the same choice in education that higher income families are able to provide. What impediments stand in the way of implementing school choice? How large of a factor is union opposition to school choice? Are unions correct in asserting that vouchers take resources away from the public school system and are financially unaccountable? What about charters? Recently, the California Supreme Court decision upheld the rights of charter schools not to be controlled by the union’s collective bargaining agreements. Will this lead to an increased number of charter schools? How does the national school choice movement encourage reform in California? What trends or alternatives may arise in the future? A panel of experts will discuss these questions and will offer their assessment of school choice programs a decade after Zelman v. Simmons-Harrisopened the door for school choice programs.

Panel Two: Recent Lawsuits Challenging Tenure and Pure-Seniority Based Layoffs
12:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Recent lawsuits have been filed in California challenging the state’s system of tenure and pure-seniority based layoffs. Students Matter recently filed a lawsuit in California seeking to overturn the rules governing the tenure system, which require schools to decide after 18 months whether a teacher deserves tenure, before a performance has been fully documented; to lay off teachers based almost solely on seniority; and to go through a protracted appeals process before laying off a teacher for poor performance. These lawsuits follow earlier suits concerning barring seniority-based lawsuits and the use of student performance in teacher reviews. How will this litigation affect education reform in California? Do other legal impediments stand in the way of a student receiving a quality education? How will the California’s teachers union affect these lawsuits? Do unions impede efforts to remove poor performing teachers, or are they a needed safeguard to ensure both a quality education for students and professional rights for educators?

Tomorrow, December 12, 2012, FedSoc's Criminal Law and Procedure Practice Group is hosting a Teleforum on cybersecurity. Here are the details:

Start : Tuesday, December 11, 2012 2:00 PM

End : Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:00 PM

Computer hacking is a large and growing problem, with no signs of abating as the world continues to modernize. Static defenses like firewalls and encryption are helpful but not foolproof. Experts seem to disagree as to whether the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1996 permits a hacked individual or entity to “hack back,” that is, go on the offense and attack the attacking computer. The Department of Justice has taken the position that hacking back itself violates the law, while some notable experts assert that hacking back in self defense is permissible. Join our experts as they discuss the legal limits.﻿

Featuring:

Hon. Stewart A. Baker﻿, Steptoe & Johnson LLP and former Assistant U.S. Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security﻿

Teleforum calls are open to all dues paying members of the Federalist Society. To become a member, sign up here. As a member, you should receive email announcements of upcoming Teleforum calls which contain the conference call phone number. If you are not receiving those email announcements, please contact us at 202-822-8138.﻿﻿﻿

The 15th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference will be held on January 4-5, 2013 in New Orleans. The purpose of our Annual Faculty Conferences is to provide an opportunity for those interested in the Society to share ideas and scholarship with each other. You can find more information, as well as RSVP, at this link. Here is the agenda, which includes a visit by Justice Antonin Scalia:

Extraordinary and sometimes crippling levels of debt have plagued American states in recent years. State officials are often bound by inherited obligations to their citizens and employees and frequently lack the resources to meet those demands. David A. Skeel Jr., a University of Pennsylvania law professor, suggests an innovative solution to the issue: enacting a bankruptcy law for states to restructure and resolve unsustainable state debts.

Critics, however, raise a number of concerns: Could a state bankruptcy impair bond markets? Is this an attempt to evade pension obligations to public employees? Would subjecting state finances to federal trustee supervision violate state sovereignty and principles of federalism?

Meanwhile, Kathleen Parker writes on that same issue in today's Washington Post:

How many years of the woman have we had? Let me count.

To the extent that women’s votes count more than men’s, it’s been the year of the woman since at least 1964 — when women began outvoting men.

In 2008, 10 million more women than men voted, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

The operative assumption, obviously, is that women pick winners and losers as a voting bloc. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is true that more women are trending toward Barack Obama than Mitt Romney. But this owes only partly to the usual “women’s issues.” And it is, potentially, temporary.

Thanks to certain outspoken members/supporters of the GOP, the Democratic Party has been able to capitalize on a fiction created by the Obama campaign — the alleged “war on women.” It is not helpful when people such as Rush Limbaugh call Sandra Fluke a “slut” for her position that insurance should cover contraception. Then there was Todd Akin’s strange intelligence that victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant, a flourish of rare ignorance. Check the birthrates in countries where rape is employed as a weapon. Finally, some Republican-led states have waved one too many ultrasound wands at women.

While these incidents and anecdotes provide handy faces for dart practice, they constitute a war on women only if all women find these positions reprehensible. And only if allwomen care more about contraception and reproductive rights above all other issues, which is not the case.

This also happens to be the year of the fiscal cliff, when automatic spending cuts take effect at the same time Bush-era tax breaks expire. It’s the fourth year of a $1 trillion budget deficit. It is a year that the number of unemployed Americans is still too high and economic recovery too slow.

It is also the year that al-Qaeda caught its breath and began gaining traction again, and when terrorists murdered one of our ambassadors. It is another year when America’s standing as the world’s brightest light continues to dim, and that the Arab Spring descended into an extremist winter.

These are things that women care about, too.

Women, in other words, recognize the gravity of the problems this nation faces and are likely to pick a candidate based on these issues rather than on a party’s platform on abortion and contraception.

In fact, women, who are not a monolithic group any more than men are, don’t really rank reproductive issues at the top of their concerns. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that fewer than 1 percent of respondents mentioned women’s health or birth control as top election-year issues. On access to birth control and abortion, attitudes tend to reflect party affiliation rather than gender. A USA Today-Gallup poll this year found that women split on abortion in numbers comparable to the country as a whole, which is 49 percent to 45 percent favoring abortion rights.

Topping women’s concerns are the same things that are men’s highest concerns: the economy and jobs. The smartest candidate will recognize this sooner rather than later.

In Virginia’s Senate race between former governors Tim Kaine and George Allen, Kaine, the Democrat, has tried to merge the issues. Abortion and birth control are fundamentally economic issues, he says. Few seem to recall that, in one of the early Republican primary debates, Romney responded to a question about contraception as follows: “It’s working just fine. Just leave it alone.”

This doesn’t sound like a call to arms against women.

When subsequently asked what he thought about the gender gap, Romney said he wished that his wife, Ann, were there to answer the question. Romney benefits greatly from his better half, as he would put it, but he errs in thinking a woman would do a better job answering the question than would a man.

Women do not require special handling because, for the most part, they do not think of themselves first or primarily as women. (This is big news for those men who failed to take note.)

Women think of themselves as breadwinners and job-seekers. They think of themselves as parents who want good schools and enough money to send their kids to college. They think of themselves as Americans who worry about national security and the nation’s image abroad.

These are the issues that matter to women, the vast majority of whom will cast their votes accordingly. How about we ditch the gender nonsense and declare this the year of the American?

Five years ago, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire Corporation, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted Section VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as barring gender employment discrimination cases based on events older than 180 days, determining that paychecks received by an employee after the alleged discriminatory action did not constitute renewed acts of alleged discrimination. After Ledbetter, Congress amended the Civil Rights Act to provide that the 180 day statute of limitations resets with each paycheck. Since then, gender issues have taken an increasingly important role in discussions of law and policy. What are the true implications of the Ledbetter case? Has it been used, perhaps opportunistically or disingenuously, by either side in this debate? Have gender issues in general been mis-used in the same way? On October 11, 2012, FedSoc's Civil Rights Practice Group will be hosting a panel on these issues. Here are the details:

Start : Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:00 PM

End : Thursday, October 11, 2012 2:00 PM

Location: National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC

Featuring:

Ms. Jennifer Braceras, Columnist and former Commissioner, United States Commission on Civil Rights

Ms. Fatima Goss-Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment, National Women’s Law Center

In the past few years, various states, citing voter fraud and other concerns, have passed legislation that, among other things, require some form of approved identification to vote. The provisions of these statutes and their identification requirements vary. Critics argue, however, that they are unified at least to the extent that they will disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, elderly and poor people, asserting that they are less likely to have the required ID and least likely to obtain the required form of ID with ease. Furthermore, critics assert that there is no form of significant voter fraud that ID requirements would address. Our experts will debate the merits of the statutes and the arguments about voter fraud. Here are the details:

Tomorrow September 2th, FedSoc's International & National Security Law Practice Group and the Free Speech & Election Law Practice Group is sponsoring a teleforum on "Free Speech, International Law, and the Impact of Violence Against U.S. Diplomatic Missions Abroad."

Since a recent series of riots and violent attacks, the U.S. has shut down some of its embassies and consulates in the Middle East. The worst of these attacks resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Many, including members of the U.S. government, have blamed the attacks on a film made by a U.S. filmmaker, for which a trailer was posted on YouTube. Should the violent reaction to a U.S. film cause us to rethink the nature of free speech protections for hate speech in the U.S.? Should the U.S. government more aggressively defend the free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution in the global community?

Here are the details for the call:

Start : Tuesday, September 25, 2012 12:00 PM

End : Tuesday, September 25, 2012 1:00 PM

Featuring:

Prof. Julian Ku, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of International Programs, Hofstra University School of LawProf. Peter J. Spiro, Charles R. Weiner Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law

Agenda: Call begins at 12:00 noon Eastern Time.﻿

Registration details: Teleforum calls are open to all dues paying members of the Federalist Society. To become a member, sign up here. As a member, you should receive email announcements of upcoming Teleforum calls which contain the conference call phone number. If you are not receiving those email announcements, please contact us at 202-822-8138.﻿

October 1st marks the first day of the 2012 Supreme Court Term. Thus far the Court's docket includes major cases about affirmative action, international law and the alien tort statute, national security, criminal law, and others. Notable cases include Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, concerning the Equal Protection Clause and a public university's use of race in undergraduate admissions; Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, about the application of the Alien Tort Statute to human rights abuses abroad, and whether the statute covers corporations; Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, regarding the right to challenge the constitutionality of a global terrorism wiretapping program; Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, concerning the proof that investors need to pursue a securities fraud claim by class-action lawsuit; and Florida v. Harris and Florida v. Jardines, about police use of a drug-sniffing dog to search the exterior of a private residence under the Fourth Amendment, and whether a dog’s “alert” constitutes probable cause for search of a private vehicle. The Court is also likely to add other significant cases, including potentially a case filed by proponents of California’s “Proposition 8” challenge, which now has a certiorari petition pending. In addition to these cases and others, the panelists will discuss the current composition and the future of the Court, a particularly timely topic in light of the upcoming presidential election. On September 27th, the Federalist Society is holding its October Term 2012 preview. Here are the details:

In celebration of the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution, Justice Clarence Thomas will join Akhil Amar of Yale Law School tonight at the National Archives to discuss the Constitution’s past, present, and future. The event, which is co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Constitutional Accountability Center, will be streamed live at 7:00 p.m. ET at www.booktv.org.

Since Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's push to limit the scope of collective bargaining, public-sector unions have been increasingly in the spotlight—or perhaps in the crosshairs. New Jersey governor Chris Christie attacked teachers' unions in popular YouTube videos, and Indiana recently became the 23rd "right to work" state. In Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind, Mallory and Elizabeth Factor highlight the political power of public-sector unions. The authors argue that public-sector unions use underhanded and often illegal tactics to increase the support for liberal politicians. The authors also argue that public-sector unions are fighting to unionize as many people as they can—including anyone who accepts any form of state subsidy—and thus to wield more power over our government and our lives. In response, union supporters contend that public-sector unions help secure important rights for government employees who would otherwise lack the power to bargain effectively over the conditions of their employment. So do public-sector unions serve legitimate public interests or are they another interest group seeking more from the government? Join us to hear the comments from author as well as the perspective a union representative with intimate knowledge of unions' political activities.

Panelists:

Prof. Mallory Factor, John C. West Professor, International Politics and American Government, The CitadelChris Townsend, Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, Commentary Trevor Burris, Legal Associate, Center for Constitutional Studies, The Cato Institute, Moderato

In a recent SCOTUSblog symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alexander Bickel's The Least Dangerous Branch, Roger Pilon argued that the twin themes that emerged from that important volume -- the "countermajoritarian difficulty" and the "passive virtues" -- were especially influential in shaping the constitutional thought of Bickel's colleague, Robert Bork. Whatever their differences, Bork subsequently became seminal figure in shaping the modern conservative legal movement, especially through the Federalist Society. But those ideas led also to a response within that movement from libertarians concerned as much about the "majoritarian difficulty," all of which has led to a spirited debate on the Right over the nation's "First Principles." Contributing also to the SCOTUSblog symposium, Adam J. White noted the Madisonian and Burkean elements in Bickel's writings. Drawing on what he sees as Bickel's "principled prudence," he cautioned "not to press the Court to recognize rights divorced from principles rooted in national experience," thus affording us a good contrast for the discussion at hand.

FedSoc's Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group invites you to join a teleforum on the subject "The Least Dangerous Branch: Still Relevant, 50 Years Later?" Here are the details:

The Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy initiatives. Any expressions of opinion are solely those of the author(s). We hope this blog will foster discussion regarding important current issues.